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From Ancient Near East to Early Islamic History

Schmidtke, Sabine. 2018. Studying the Near and Middle East at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1935–2018 (Gorgias Handbooks). Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.
The history of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study dates back to 1935, and it is the one area of scholarship that has been continuously represented at the Institute ever since. The volume opens with a historical sketch of the study of the Near and Middle East at the Institute. The second part of the volume consists of essays and short studies by IAS scholars, past and present, covering fields such as the ancient Near East and early Islamic history, the Bible and the Qurʾān, Islamic intellectual history within and beyond denominational history, Arabic and other Semitic languages and literatures, Islamic religious and legal practices, law and society, the Islamic West, the Ottoman world, Iranian studies, the modern Middle East, and Islam in the West.

The Ancient Near East and Early Islamic History

  • GEOFFREY HERMAN: “There we sat down”: Mapping Settlement Patterns in Sasanian Babylonia
  • FRANCESCA ROCHBERG: The Near Eastern Heritage in Greco-Roman Astronomy
  • DAVID F. GRAF: Arabia before Islam
  • G. W. BOWERSOCK: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Kingdom in Arabia
  • HENNING TRÜPER: Entanglements of Classics and Orientalism in the History of Philology, and of Princeton University, circa 1900
  • MURIEL DEBIE: For a Different History of the Seventh Century CE: Syriac Sources and Sasanian and Arab-Muslim Occupation of the Middle East
  • STELIOS MICHALOPOULOS: Trade and Geography in the Origins and Spread of Islam
  • CARLO SCARDINO: New Insights into the Continuation of Ancient Science among the Arabs
  • D. G. TOR: The Empire Strikes Back: The Restoration of Caliphal Political Power in the Medieval Islamic World

The Bible and the Qurʾān

  • KONRAD SCHMID: Who Wrote the Torah? Textual, Historical, Sociological, and Ideological Cornerstones of the Formation of the Pentateuch
  • STEFAN SCHORCH: Is a Qibla a Qibla? Samaritan Traditions about Mount Garizim in Contact and Contention 95  SABINE SCHMIDTKE: Muslim Perceptions and Receptions of the Bible
  • ROBERTO TOTTOLI: Editing the Qurʾān in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe
  • GEORGES TAMER: The Concept of Time in the Qurʾān 118
  • G. W. BOWERSOCK: The Voice of God

Islamic Intellectual History Within and Beyond Denominational Borders

  • SONJA BRENTJES: Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa
  • KHALED EL-ROUAYHEB: Rethinking the Canons of Islamic Intellectual History
  • SABINE SCHMIDTKE: The People of Justice and Monotheism: Muʿtazilism in Islam and Judaism
  • KELLY DEVINE THOMAS: The Necessity of a Historical Approach to Islamic Theology: Tracing Modern Islamic Thought to the Middle Ages
  • GARTH FOWDEN: Abraham and Aristotle in Dialogue
  • FRÉDÉRIQUE WOERTHER: What Makes an Orator Trustworthy? Some Notes on the Transmission of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in the Arabic World and Its Interpretation by al-Fārābī
  • FRANÇOIS DE BLOIS: Aristotle and Avicenna on the Habitability of the Southern Hemisphere
  • EMMA GANNAGÉ: Physical Theory and Medical Practice in the Post-Avicenna Era: Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Isrāʾīlī on Properties (Exploratory Notes)
  • FRANK GRIFFEL: Was Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī an Averroist after All? On the Double-Truth Theory in Medieval Latin and Islamic Thought
  • SAMER TRABOULSI: The Challenges of Druze Studies

Arabic and other Semitic Languages and Literatures

  • MAURICE A. POMERANTZ: Chasing after a Trickster: The Maqāmāt between Philology and World Literature
  • BILAL ORFALI: Employment Opportunities in Literature in Tenth-Century Islamic Courts 243SEBASTIAN GÜNTHER: “A Glimpse of the Mystery of Mysteries”: Ibn Ṭufayl on Learning and Spirituality without Prophets and Scriptures
  • GEOFFREY A. KHAN: Aramaic and Endangered Languages 262GEORGE A. KIRAZ: Dots in the Writing Systems of the Middle East
  • WILL HANLEY: Unlocking Middle Eastern Names

Islamic Religious and Legal Practices, Law and Society

  • ZOLTAN SZOMBATHY: Jurists on Literature and Men of Letters on Law: The Interfaces of Islamic Law and Medieval Arabic Literature
  • MARION KATZ: Law, Ethics, and the Problem of Domestic Labor in the Islamic Marriage Contract
  • HASSAN ANSARI: The Shiʿite Interpretation of the Status of Women 300ANVER M. EMON: Islamic Law and Private International Law: The Case of International Child Abduction
  • VANJA HAMZIĆ: A Renaissance Interrupted? Debating Personhood through a Sexual Act in the Twelfth-Century Christianate and Islamicate Worlds 308MARGARET S. GRAVES: Say Something Nice: Supplications on Medieval Objects, and Why They Matter
  • BIRGIT KRAWIETZ: Ten Theses on Working with Demons (Jinn) in Islamic Studies 331BABER JOHANSEN :The Invisibility of Paternal Filiation: The Power of Institutions versus Scientific Proof in Roman and Muslim Law
  • RAINER BRUNNER: Joseph Schacht and German Orientalism in the 1920s and 1930s

The Islamic West and Beyond

  • MARIBEL FIERRO: The Other Edge: The Maghrib in the Mashriq
  • DEVIN J. STEWART: Identifying “the Mufti of Oran”: A Detective Story
  • MERCEDES GARCÍA-ARENAL: Castilian and Arabic: The Debates about the Natural Languages of Spain
  • PATRICK J. O’BANION: Peace and Quiet in Castile: Baptized Muslims, Feudal Lords, and the Royal Expulsion
  • VALERIE GONZALEZ: The Hermeneutics of Islamic Ornament: The Example of the Alhambra

The Ottoman World and Beyond

  • AMY SINGER: Edirne/Adrianople: The Best City in Greece 390
  • JANE HATHAWAY: The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem
  • EMINE FETVACI: Persian Aesthetics in Ottoman Albums
  • YÜCEL YANIKDAĞ: Syphilis as Measure of Civilization and Progress? Ottoman-Turkish Responses to European Medical Discourses on the General Paresis of the Insane
  • PETER B. GOLDEN: The Construction of Ethnicity in Medieval Turkic Eurasia 420RON SELA: Tamerlane’s (Fictitious) Pilgrimage to the Tombs of the Prophets
  • ADAM SABRA: Building a Family Shrine in Ottoman Cairo

Iranian and Persianate Studies

  • ANDREA PIRAS: The Shaping of the Holy Self: Art and Religious Life in Manichaeism
  • HASSAN ANSARI: Patricia Crone’s Contribution to Iranian Studies
  • DANIEL J. SHEFFIELD: Lord of the Planetary Court: Revisiting a “Nativist Prophet” of Early Modern Iran
  • RUDI MATTHEE: Nādir Shāh in Iranian Historiography: Warlord or National Hero? 467NEGIN NABAVI: The Birth of Newspaper Culture in Nineteenth-Century Iran
  • VERA B. MOREEN: A Brief History of Judeo-Persian Literature

The Modern Middle East and Islam in the West

  • ISRAEL GERSHONI: Liberal Democratic Legacies in Modern Egypt: The Role of the Intellectuals, 1900–1950
  • BERNARD HAYKEL: ISIS and al-Qaeda—What Are They Thinking? Understanding the Adversary
  • THOMAS HEGGHAMMER: Jihadi Weeping
  • NOAH SALOMON: For Love of the Prophet: A Reply
  • ILANA FELDMAN: Living in a Humanitarian World: Palestinian Refugees and the Challenge of Long-Term Displacement
  • DIDIER FASSIN: The Multiple Figures of the Witness in Palestine
  • CATHERINE ROTTENBERG: Hagar: Jewish-Arab Education for Equality, Creating a Common Future in Israel
  • JOAN WALLACH SCOTT: La Nouvelle Laïcité and Its Critics: Preface to the French Translation of The Politics of the Veil